Statement of the Technical Field
The inventive arrangements relate to systems and methods for managing mobile point of sale operations in a retail setting.
Description of the Related Art
Wireless communication technologies and increasing use of devices such as smartphones present increased opportunities for retail stores to interact with customers. For example, International Patent Publication number WO 2013116894 A1 to Cohen et al. (hereinafter “Cohen et al.”) discloses a customer relationship management (CRM) system that uses scanners to detect the arrival of smartphones carried by customers in certain areas. The CRM system in Cohen discloses an arrangement in which specific user devices are differentiated by reading a Media Access Control (MAC) address of Wi-Fi enabled mobile devices. The data acquired in this way is sent to a network server and stored on a database. Cohen et al. also discloses that a registration process can be used to link a particular person to their user device. An in-store device in Cohen can detect a user device in a defined area of a store and can track at least one activity characteristic of a user of the user device. The in-store device can also initiate a CRM activity for the user based on the at least one activity characteristic. The activity characteristics described in Cohen et al. include: movement of the user between sections of the defined store area; an amount of time spent by the user in a section of the defined store area; and/or updated location(s) of the user.
Operations on the retail store floor are becoming increasingly complex, particularly as the use of handheld devices such as smart phones and tablets becomes more widespread. Among the areas of change in retail practice is sales finalization, commonly referred to as POS (point-of-sale). Recently some retailers have introduced mobile POS (mPOS) service in which a store employee meets a customer somewhere on the sales floor and uses a handheld device (e.g., phone or tablet) to create an invoice, transact a payment step (e.g., using the customer's credit card), create a receipt (usually electronic), and send details of the sale to the store's backend system for processing (e.g., updating the store's sales totals and perpetual inventory databases).